BillerudKorsnäs AB (publ) (BILL) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning and welcome to this presentation following the publication of our interim report for the first quarter twenty twenty six. Billerud's President and CEO, Ivar Vatne, and our CFO, Andre Krij, will present And after that, we will open up for questions. By that, I would like to hand over to Eva. Thank you, Lena, and good morning, everyone. And thank you all for listening in to our comments this Tuesday morning. It's been another quarter with twists and turns and yet again, some unexpected events to navigate through. The heading on the slide is our summary of the quarter. But as you would expect, some nuances between our regions. So let's get into it. And next slide, please. As expected, it's been a tough start of 2026, fighting a challenging market, but we continue to see different realities between our two regions. And there are also some clear positives to comment on. In North America, we recorded another strong quarter and we continue to be well positioned with a local US production to serve a broad customer base from our Midwest manufacturing footprint. 16% EBITDA margin is solid, but we were hit by some unusually heavy snowfalls and freezing temperatures that forced us to take a couple of days on plan production stop. And it drove our energy and logistic costs higher than expected. For Region Europe, it was a quarter of incremental price pressure, currency headwind and loss of emission rights that pushed down the profitability to a level below expectations. And having said that, we have plans in place, and we are taking further action to strengthen the situation going forward. And we are certainly more optimistic about our Q2. And we do expect the profit recovery, but more on that later. One clear positive for our Q1 was the shipment. We managed to grow ...